Rahel Zelenkowits, M.A.

Primary research areas

• Gender Studies
• Qualitative Empirical Social Research
• Social Reproduction
• Platform Capitalism
• Social Inequality

Doctoral Research Project

Platform Workers – A Situational Analysis of Reproductive Service Work on Digital Platforms

Everyday caregiving, cooking, and cleaning can be easily and flexibly outsourced in a minimal amount of time through digital platforms such as betreut.de. The platform economy is responding to the crisis of social reproduction and creating a new class of workers in the reproductive services sector – platform workers. Academic and policy discourses focus particularly on public (mostly male-coded) delivery and transportation activities, while female-coded “gig work” such as cleaning or caregiving in private homes often remains invisible. With the platformization of the low-wage social-reproductive sector, the assumption is that the feminized, increasingly ethnicized, and declassed allocation of care work in private households is perpetuated and simultaneously redistributed within the social sphere of production and reproduction relations. The question of who maintains social reproduction, how, and where is linked to the issue of social participation along the categories of paid or unpaid, private or public, recognized or devalued forms of care work. This doctoral project takes a qualitative-empirical approach to the question of where and how people fight for social advancement and against social decline within the context of platform-based reproductive labor, utilizing the research methodology of grounded theory and its situational-analytical extension.

Presentations

• Zelenkowits, Rahel (2026): „What you need to do?“ Subjektivierung zwischen digitaler Selbstinszenierung und analoger Dienstleistungspraxis in der plattformvermittelten Reproduktionsarbeit. Netzwerktagung Digitalität und Subjekt, Humboldt Universität Berlin, 26./27. Februar.
• Zelenkowits, Rahel (2025): „Es muss geschätzt werden“: der Wert reproduktiver Arbeit zwischen Plattformlogik und subjektiver Praxis. Jahrestreffen Digital Geographies of Valuation: Platforms, Technologies, Narratives. Goethe Universität Frankfurt a.M., 06./07. November.
• Zelenkowits, Rahel (2024): Die Plattformarbeiter:innen – eine situationsanalytische Betrachtung reproduktiver Dienstleistungsarbeiten auf digitalen Plattformen. Nachwuchssymposium Dimensionen einer vielfältigen Fluchtforschung: Diversität, Intersektionalität und heterogene Ankunftskontexte in urbanen und ruralen Räumen. Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften München, 16. Mai.
• Zelenkowits, Rahel, gemeinsam mit Çelik, Gözde: (2024): »And we start to push and push and push« – Empirische Perspektiven auf die Dialektik der Teilhabe. Teilhabe-Workshop im Rahmen des Promotionskollegs »Dialektik der Teilhabe«. Frankfurt a. M. Haus am Dom, 18./19. April.

CV